Learning by lego: business schools adapt to change

Time is money, says Kumeshnee West, head of executive education at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. Clients are demanding shorter, sharper executive programmes. "They want more impact, quicker," she says.

Savvy companies and government entities have always expected return on investment from their executive education, even if they’re not sure how to measure that return. But now, with training budgets under pressure and technology changing the way companies operate, demand for cost-effectiveness is more insistent.

Lerato Mahlasela, director of custom programmes at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), says many clients no longer want multiday general management and leadership programmes. "It’s more face-to-face briefings.

"Companies feel they can no longer afford their people to be out of the office for extended periods. They want a specific theme, a slice of the learning journey."

Gibs dean Prof Nicola Kleyn talks of "stackable learning parts". Companies cherry-pick skills they want executives to learn at a particular time. "They identify someone for promotion and decide, for example, that the most pressing need is negotiating ability. So that’s what we bring." Other skills are added to the stack as needed. "It’s like just-in-time education," says Kleyn.

Wits Business School (WBS) professor Brian Armstrong puts it differently: "It’s an educational Lego kit where we add blocks according to client needs."

Sharmla Chetty, SA-based head of Duke Corporate Education’s European and African division, says sessions that used to last several days may now be compressed into a single day or even two or three hours. "People are being recruited and upskilled very differently," she says. "It’s about creating individual learning journeys."

Could the shift towards abbreviated teaching interventions have something to do with shorter attention spans of younger people, in an age of instant gratification and momentary social media interactions? "It’s possible," says Kleyn, "though it’s too soon yet to draw conclusions."

These are challenging times for business schools. As discussed elsewhere, technology, university relationships and the emergence of new players demand fresh ideas and strategies.

And then there are the internal challenges of schools themselves — long-standing issues that won’t go away. Apart from a few pockets, the shortage of young black academics remains acute. White academics aren’t exactly flooding the sector, either. Prof Helena van Zyl, director of the University of the Free State Business School, says: "Faculty are getting eroded. We all need to work on succession planning."

Nelson Mandela University Business School’s Leon Mouton says more companies are setting up in-house training academies then calling in established schools to conduct education. Budgets are often tight. "If we met some demands, we’d be operating out of the boot of a car," he says.

Schools are also counting the cents. Prof Fulu Netswera, director of North-West University’s business school, is keeping some full-time academic posts open to pay for other budget matters, like international exchanges.

One area where schools report increased demand is sustainability. Rather like ethics a few years ago, it is a subject considered integral to every aspect of modern business.

Rhodes Business School dean Prof Owen Skae says: "We live in a country that is water-stressed, we are still reliant on fossil fuels, we face droughts and cyclones, and Johannesburg has some of the most polluted groundwater on the planet. As business schools, we are duty-bound to ensure students — and companies — have integrated thinking in this environment."

WBS director Sibusiso Sibisi says: "We are creating the next generation of leaders for SA and Africa. We need leaders conscious of everything around them. That means people with empathy, not slave drivers. It’s not just a question of students learning. In many cases, they have to unlearn old attitudes before they can move on to new ones."

Chris van der Hoven, CEO of the University of Stellenbosch Business School Executive Development (USB-ED), says companies also need to unlearn. Some still treat executive education as a commodity, a product to be bought and sold like coffee or copper. It’s a budgetary item, rather than a means to take the company forward.

For USB-ED, which operates alongside the university’s business school as a private business in which the university has a major stake, the aim is to be the "antidote" to a normal business school.

"We are in the early stages of a four-phase process to redefine ourselves," he says. "Schools should not try to be all things to all people. We are looking for a sympathetic view of what the economy needs — areas where we can make a difference."

Mouton says: "You can’t keep doing the old things and hope clients will be satisfied. I agree with the view that if 75% of your income was not developed in the past three years, you are regressing. You have to be continually developing."

You also have to be humble, says Henley Africa dean Jon Foster-Pedley. "We don’t assume we have the best insights in the world for everything. But we are experiential. We assemble contradictory bodies of evidence and challenge students. We expect them to take positions on issues. Theirs may be stronger than that of our lecturers. That’s fine. We all learn. Academics mustn’t think they’re always right."

For some schools, like MSA (formerly Monash SA), the immediate priority is a defendable foothold in the market. "There’s no denying that we aren’t seen as a first-choice executive education provider," says director Prof HB Klopper. "The market considers us an alternative to established schools." That, he hopes, will change as the relatively young school and its shareholder, the Independent Institute of Education, put in more resources.

It’s something Milpark confronted a few years ago. The school, which this year became the first SA independent to win international accreditation for its MBA programme, has grown its executive education offerings slowly but has now appointed a dedicated department head to accelerate the process. "We need to look at things differently from the usual, premeditated way," says dean Cobus Oosthuizen.

Actually, says Regent Business School director Ahmed Shaikh, that should be everyone’s goal. New technology may be shaping the future of business education but schools must also respond to more urgent SA needs in a society "plagued by inequality and infested with corruption and graft".

He says: "Executive education has to be truly transformative. Business schools must shift the emphasis firmly towards intellectual creativity and problem-solving." It’s not just about teaching the usual subjects but about making students "employable" in a changing environment.

Schools should take clients into "uncomfortable spaces that offer meaningful change", says Prof Raphael Mpofu, acting executive dean of Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership. They’re not the only spaces it’s entering. Thanks to its association with the international links of the parent university, he says the school has nearly 600 exam venues around the world.

Regenesys, the private Sandton-based school, has tried unsuccessfully to increase its international footprint. It already operates in India and Nigeria, but when it tried to open a Dubai campus offering academic degrees, it hit a brick wall. SA education authorities said they were not allowed to accredit SA degrees in other countries — unlike some countries which can offer their qualifications freely.

Regenesys dean Penny Law is sympathetic. The government’s Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC), of which she is a board member, is trying to create policy for awarding SA degrees abroad. She says: "The HEQC recognises the challenge but faces a huge backlog in matters before it. This is something we will come back to later."